


A Red-Lipped American Summer

by orphan_account



Category: Women's Soccer RPF
Genre: F/F
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-08-24
Updated: 2013-09-03
Packaged: 2017-12-24 11:33:09
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 2
Words: 13,668
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/939516
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/orphan_account/pseuds/orphan_account
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Summer in Portland lasts from late June to late September; Alex's summer with Tobin would be even shorter.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> Naturally, I changed up a few things that happened in real life for the sake of this story: mostly, Alex doesn't get injured at the end of the season, and Tobin is allowed to play in the National Team friendly before returning to PSG, along with a few minor edits to keep things flowing.
> 
> This was originally meant to be one long one-shot, but I divided it into two chapters for simplicity's sake and time constraints.

The first time Tobin spoke, her tone was so casual that Alex didn’t pull her attention away from her computer in time to catch the words.

“Huh?”

Tobin leaned against the doorframe of Alex’s room, hands in her pockets. “I said, I resigned with PSG,” she repeated.

Alex took a moment to close her laptop and nodded. She had been expecting this for a while now; everyone had.

“When do you leave?”

“September sixth. They’re letting me play in the friendly and finish up things before I leave.”

Only 66 days away.

Tobin’s current living situation felt temporary enough already—she’d shown up in Portland a week earlier than expected (on Alex’s birthday, of course, gift in hand and a shrug in her shoulders, as if this had been the plan all along) and was living out of her suitcase for a few days in the Rose city before going south for Cheney’s wedding. It seemed like Alex had just stopped missing her and already the countdown to when she would miss her again had begun. She had only two months with her best friend.

She put on a smile anyway.

“Well, now that it’s set in stone, that’s just one more thing to celebrate tonight. I’ll bring extra sparklers to the barbeque and we’ll remind you how Americans party. A fourth of July to remember.”

Tobin smiled too, looking relieved. “Deal.”

* * *

The morning after the fourth of July, Tobin left again to attend two weddings, across the country from one another; she returned on Monday, her official Portland arrival date, to Alex's plans of dinner with the whole team. Her unofficial debut, Alex called it, delighted. She needed to meet everyone. Or rather, Alex had to show her off to everyone.

“But dude, I’m so tired. Can we do it tomorrow?”

“I already made dinner reservations!” Alex said. Her exasperation rose as Tobin dove onto the couch and pressed her face into a pillow, uttering only a noncommittal groan. “Tobin!”

“Mmm…I’m gonna nap instead.”

“C’mon, it’ll be like my belated birthday dinner. We need to do it!”

Tobin turned her head just enough to look at Alex with one eye. “Uh, I was at your birthday dinner. That’s the whole reason I came into Portland last week. I slept on the couch because my bed wasn’t even here, remember?”

“Don’t be a martyr, you could sleep on the floor and be happy.”

“Sounds good to me,” Tobin said, rolling onto the ground with her pillow and a mischievous smirk.

“You fu—I don’t even know why I try to take you places.”

Eventually Tobin, who never intended to refuse Alex in the first place and only played obstinate in order to fluster her, roused herself from the floor to Allie’s laughter and Alex’s shout of mingled relief and triumph.

The media and the public had expectations for Tobin Heath. Any player of that caliber arriving midseason should understandably galvanize a tired Portland squad with such an injection of creativity and energy in the midfield. If their dinner was any indication, the media was completely right: the young team centered around Tobin, drawn to her first for her newness and novelty and then for her laughter and smile. She had their names down within five minutes and she had four different conversations going within fifteen. Even the wait staff and other patrons seemed to be entertained.

Of somewhat greater interest and entertainment to the team, however, was Alex; for the past three months they had only been around one half of the duo, never imagining that their competitive, impatient, straightforward teammate could descend into such childlike lightheartedness in the presence of her best friend, who was supposedly known for her blasé approach to everything.

Even Alex's occasional antics with Allie hadn't prepared them for this. Whenever she thought Tobin wasn't paying attention, she would reach over and steal some fries off Tobin's plate, and more often than not, the midfielder was paying attention and the ensuing battle resulted in the stolen fries being either knocked to the ground or stuffed hastily into someone's mouth. They made faces at one another during each lull in conversation. They told stories in alternating pieces, finishing each other’s sentences and crumbling into breathless laughter before they could get the entire story out, not caring that the rest of the team had no idea what they were talking about.

"Damn, you're like a kid who just got her favorite toy back," Sinc said with a nearly disbelieving laugh, causing Alex to beam over at Tobin as the latter talked to Mana about Hawaii's surfing scene.

"You have no idea," Allie jumped in, "They’re basically inseparable. Without her, Alex has been moping for weeks."

"I have not—"

Allie put her hand over Alex's mouth and continued: "Just try living with ‘em, Sincy. They'll sit in complete silence and then exchange one glance and burst into laughter. At first I felt like I wasn’t getting the joke, but it turns out they’re just dumb."

Alex looked ready to protest again, despite the fact that her reddened face supported Allie's claim completely, but was cut off by Tobin shooting a spoon forward towards the last bit of Alex's brownie sundae.

"No, damn it, Tobin!" Her defense failed and Tobin leaned back out of reach, smirking around the ice cream in her mouth, looking supremely pleased with herself. Alex threw a french fry at her.

Christine grinned at Allie. "Good luck on your two months of babysitting."

"Uh, good luck to you too—you have to captain them."

* * *

In addition to her on-field potential, Tobin Heath arrived in Portland to a battery of other expectations.

The teammates who had not yet met her expected everything from aloof professional star to a zealous young kid: instead they found a willing participant in any adventure her teammates could come up with. At any given moment, she could be found coming up with goal celebration dances with Danielle or elaborate handshakes with Nikki, or else plotting out Karina’s mayoral campaign, of which she had naturally declared herself manager.

Alex, of course, expected the same old Tobin: she took great pride in taking Tobin around the town and showing her every little café, diner, music shop, and hole-in-the-wall bar she had discovered in the prior months. Every morning, they went running together—though Alex refused to allow Tobin to accompany her to yoga class after the first time, when she looked over to find Tobin asleep face-down on the mat. At practices, she was simply ecstatic to have back someone who knew all of her favorite runs and could hit her in stride nine times out of ten, while still making her smile between every play.

The general public expected Tobin would neutralize Alex Morgan’s competitiveness and bring an element of balance to the rest of the much-maligned team. Even Alex expected this. Tobin had always been there with a well-timed word of advice or joke to blunt whatever emotion was taking over her play.

Instead, it was to Cindy Parlow Cone’s expectations that Tobin rose to more faithfully than any of the others: Cindy expected the true heart and grit endemic in Carolina alumni, and she got it. Tobin’s very first practice, she slammed into Foxhoven and knocked the wind out of her, and then proceeded to demand more cutthroat head-to-head play from the rest of the team if they wanted any chance at playoffs. And that was only the beginning.  Cindy loved it. She had spent the last four months recreating Anson Dorrance’s culture of competitiveness, and Tobin’s arrival had only increased the friction, increased the intensity, and everyone had marks to prove it.

Alex poked the green and purple design on her upper thigh. “Tobs, I’ve decided that since you left me with such a clear imprint of your cleat, you are paying for dinner tonight.”

From the other end of the couch, Tobin frowned over the top of her magazine. “What about when you kicked me in the back of my calf?”

“Not my fault, you slid just as I shot. You weren’t even a defender.”

“I still have a wicked bruise though,” Tobin said. “So we’re at least even.”

"Tobin, mine is ten times worse! I'm pretty sure you can see the Nike imprint."

"Then we'll call them and have them pay you for advertising. But I'm not buying if mine is just as bad as yours."

Alex laughed eagerly; the challenge had her sitting up and looking hungry when Allie walked into the room with a bowl of cereal and reminded them of her usual role as referee.

"We're really getting into a debate about bruises?" she asked, falling into the armchair.  
  
"Allie! Whose is worse, mine or Tobin's?" 

Both girls immediately thrust out their injuries for judging. Allie didn't even glance up from her food. "Alex wins." Tobin tripped over her words trying to argue, but Allie was unmoved.

“Dude, she pouts when she doesn’t win. I’m just trying to maintain domestic harmony.”

There was no more arguing with that point; Tobin acquiesced by grabbing her phone with a sigh and dialing the restaurant as Alex resettled on the couch, contented. The small victory made for what had been a rather lackluster practice and now she could smile again, at least until the next day's training. It was a habit now: kill each other at training, come home, and palliate the stress and tension with a movie night or big dinner. Everything from Saturday morning famer’s markets, balmy evening barbeques, 2 AM donut runs increased four-fold and centered around her smile, which seemed to brighten everything around her. The summer was golden.

But even that omnipresent grin couldn’t heal all wounds, especially ones that had been forming long before she came home from France. When the Portland Thorns returned from their cross-country trip to Boston with only a narrow 2-1 win, the training environment only grew more acidic, overly competitive in some areas and completely unsupported in others, an imbalance that divided the group. Some players liked the burn and let it fuel their legs as they sprinted and played on instinct, for better or for worse; others just got burned, needing consistency and receiving only patchy support.

Alex fell somewhere between the two groups. She hadn't had a good practice in weeks. She didn't know the term for the sensation, but given it's impact on her game, she figured there she be a name for the way every run she made felt just a step slow, every touch coming off her foot just slightly uneven. She went whole trainings without hitting the ball true, always just a few millimeters out of alignment, not enough to be able to fix but enough to unbalance every shot and pass.

It seemed she spent every break in practice readjusting her cleats, her shinguards, her pre-wrap, as ifby fixing whatever was out of place she could restore the patent smoothness to her game. She couldn’t stand the feeling of a ball coming off her foot wrong, but she didn’t know how to fix it. Nothing worked. As the days passed, movie nights and water front strolls stopped lifting her after a bad practice and instead the ever-increasing irritations and inconsistencies in her life began to bend her shoulders under their weight.

The growing disturbances in the flow of her life manifested in her game, as well: a yellow card for stupidly kicking the ball out of bounds after a foul caused Cindy to bench her for the last half hour of the game against Chicago. Three days later, she mis-played a pass and tripped the defender who stole the ball for another yellow against Sky Blue, but Cindy had learned her lesson in the Chicago tie and left Alex on the field to ride out the win.

Three days after that, she narrowly avoided another yellow when Desiree Scott shoved her from behind and Alex whirled, looking for a fight and held back only by a word from Tobin behind her. For a half-second, she hoped that Scott would force the issue. _Maybe that would have felt better_.

Even scoring goals wasn’t helping. Tobin became a lifeline, but a tenuous one.

"I can't believe we just did a full hour of 1 v 1s. I’m in so much pain right now,” Alex grumbled on the way through the parking lot. She had to pause to hold back a wince as they climbed into her car.

Tobin shrugged, hopping into the passenger seat. “Well, Cindy was pretty pissed about the loss yesterday. We should have at least tied Kansas City.”

“I know, I know.” But the ache in her muscles created an ache in her chest and Alex’s next words came out with a bitterness she had been holding back for a while. “I don’t get her sometimes. She has us so fired up all the time, we get out and the rookies can barely contain themselves and it’s a mess.” She didn’t mention the work she had to put in to control her own heart rate and fire, or the fact that both she and Tobin were approaching the yellow card max.

“That’s how Anson coaches,” Tobin mumbled. “That’s how it always was at UNC. I guess since it works there she’s trying to bring it here.”

"I mean I'm glad for the competition, I really am, I just think it would be better to balance things more."

"Mmm. Different coaches just do things differently, I guess." 

For a moment before replying, Tobin's distinct lack of outrage while she focused on her phone caused Alex's eyebrow to lift. "Don't you think she should ease up a little though? Everyone's fighting for playoffs now, these last seven or eight games are going to be hard on us, hammering each other at practice won’t help."

"No idea." Tobin shrugged.

Alex let it drop after that, as she always, instead using the pretense of driving to avoid any more discussion with someone who didn't seem to care. Every few moments for the rest of the drive, she glanced over at the passenger seat; Tobin barely looked up once, and only then to warn Alex, "Light's green, dude."

After a practice like that, it took Alex a long shower and plenty of game visualization before she could stand in the doorway of their shared bedroom with a smile. The midfielder seemed completely unconcerned about practice and lay curled around her pillow, half-asleep.

“Tobs?”

“Sup?”

"I had an idea. Let’s…do you wanna go out to dinner tonight? I don't feel like ordering out or making anything. We could go somewhere new."

"Sounds great." Alex's heart rose for the first time that day. "I'll call up Mana and a few of the other girls. I'm sure Dani knows a good place we can all go."

"Yeah...great." If Tobin noticed the lack of conviction in Alex's smile upon hearing this, she did nothing to show it, instead rolling over with a yawn.

"Killer. Wake me up in an hour or so."

For Tobin, her friendship with Alex was, as always, comforting in its steadfastness: no matter how little they may have interacted during the day, she relished the fact that they would fall asleep each night talking to each other across their shared bedroom, the same way they did at every US camp, and the same way they did in Los Angeles.

But for Alex, sometimes—usually on the days of trying practices or exhaustingly long fan meet and greets—her smile felt a little harder to maintain than usual; she would bid Tobin goodnight and then lay awake for hours, quietly simmering in vague discontent. She constantly worked out the math in her head: 51, 46, 42, 35 days until her summer ended and France reclaimed Tobin until next May. This expiration date gave her a sense of nameless urgency that Tobin seemed to lack. Wake up, coffee, train, explore, eat, sleep. Granted, Tobin’s presence did dull the ache of frustration soccer had left her with lately. They were together, best friends, constantly surrounded by teammates they adored, but shouldn't there be more? 42 days, a US camp and game against Mexico capping their time together. Alex glanced sideways at Tobin, who snored lightly. How could she not feel the same way? A summer in Portland warmed their skin with infinite possibilities. They could have it all. The time of their lives. So why didn't they?

* * *

“Man on! Man, man, man!”

The ball arrived at Alex’s feet the same time the defender arrived at her back and both hit her with equal force, sending her to the turf, the plastic grass leaving yet another burn on her knee. The ball bounced out of bounds.

“ _Shit,”_ she hissed. The sound of the referee’s whistle and the indignant shouts of her teammates did nothing to soothe the hot rush of anger in her throat.

Alex Morgan the Diva. The New Hope Solo. No self-control, a sense of entitlement, a national team primadonna who let fame go to her head and expected preferential treatment. Normal media was intelligent enough to keep fan chatter out of the headlines but this perception of her was ubiquitous in social media, no matter what she did. As she smacked the turf and drew herself up slowly from the foul, she took a steadying breath.

“Keep it under control, ladies,” the referee said. Rachel shot Alex a look of concern—Alex waved it off—and jogged away to retrieve the ball.

Their prior games against Western New York had been tough as well; with the added pressure of playoff positioning and of playing in Rochester, the second-to-last game of the season had Alex’s heart hammering from the moment she woke up. She had expected to get hit, and she needed to keep her composure. A win would be golden going into the playoffs.

Run at goal. Studs up. Knee high. Pain. These were the fragments of thoughts that filled Alex’s mind as she bounced and rolled across the turf after a defender’s slide tackle went awry. Tobin had played a ball in behind the defense and let Alex run at goal, and the last-ditch slide tackle from a Flash player was the only thing that kept the game scoreless—she knew it was a smart tackle in theory, but when she went down and felt the defenders legs still tangled in hers, all thoughts of smart tackles and playoffs and yellow cards went out the window.

Still face down, she lashed out with a hard kick behind her and her foot connected, with what she didn’t know. A yelp and boos from the crowd met her ears.

“I’m sorry, I’m sorry, I know.” The words spilled out of her mouth as the ref sprinted toward her. Alex put her hands up in surrender. “It was an accident, our legs got tangled—”

“Alex!” Tobin nearly collided with her teammate as she rushed in, stepping between Alex and the ref. “C’mon, man, you saw the tackle, there was nothing on Portland’s end, it’s fine! Everyone’s up.”

“Cool it, all three of you,” the referee demanded. “Thirteen, you’re on thin ice already…”

Tobin instinctively reached back and put a hand on Alex’s chest, just as the forward opened her mouth to protest.

“She’s fine,” Tobin responded for them both, “It’s fine, we’re good. Just let the game go on.”

“If I hear another word out of either of you again, I’m booking you both.”

Alex stalked away, fighting to regain control of everything before play restarted. Tobin didn’t look back as she retrieved the ball.

* * *

After the game, Alex had exactly six minutes to herself in the locker room before her solitude was broken by a lean, lanky figure standing over her. She didn’t even have to look up.

“What’s up?” she asked Tobin’s ankles.

“How are you doing?”

“Just fine.”

Tobin fell into the seat beside Alex; the lie had been blatant enough to eliminate any further niceties, and in a moment they would be able to play their usual post-match game of Alex venting and Tobin nodding along until they were both exhausted.

“So listen, about the yellow card thing,” Alex cocked her eyebrow and looked over, surprised that Tobin initiated the conversation and even more surprised when she saw the apprehensive curve of her lips as she spoke. “This team can’t lose you, Lex, even for a game.”

“How may yellow cards do you have, out of curiosity?” Alex asked, pursing her lips.

She inclined her head slightly to acknowledge Alex’s point without saying anything. “But still, remember to take a breath sometimes.” Tobin shifted in her chair, rubbing the back of her neck, but she tried a smile anyway. “I get that it’s tough to always get beat up on and stuff, but you’re better than that, you know? Just take a breath and focus on what’s important.”

“Sorry,” Alex said, her voice dripping with the acrimony she’d harbored since halftime. “It’s kinda hard to just take a breath when I keep slamming into turf.”

The tone of Alex’s voice shifted Tobin from discomfort to defense and apology. “I know! But at the same time, fouling them back doesn’t do anything but take you out of the game. We need you.”

She couldn’t stop the frustration from pouring into her muscles again, as if she were out on the field, being pulled down, being elbowed…except this time, it was Tobin. The betrayal stung.

 “What was I supposed to do? You saw them ripping at my jersey all night, Tobs, you’re supposed to be on _my_ side about this.”

 “I am! I was! Arguing with the ref while you were on the ground was why I almost got carded—”

“If you saw it, then why are you on my ass about it right now? Fuck.”

The words left a bitter taste on her tongue. She put her head in her hands. Out of everyone…Tobin? Her emotions had reached their breaking point during that game and the one person she needed more than anyone, the only one she felt comfortable falling asleep against on the bus, was coming down on her.

By this point, their voices had escalated so that most of the team had stopped to look over at the two girls; Tobin seemed to sense that Alex was breaking down. She softened her face and dropped her voice.

"Look, Lex, I'm on your side. You know I always am. I'm just saying that you’re better than that."

"Yeah, I got it." Holding her breath, she jumped to her feet and grabbed her already-packed bag from her locker with unnecessary force, thankful that most of Tobin's gear was still strewn about the locker room. She strode out the door and headed for the bus without a glance back. 

* * *

They may have tied Western New York in the penultimate game of the regular season, but sour as Alex may have been, “fraternizing with the enemy” didn’t really bother her when the enemy was Abby Wambach and they sat opposite each other at Abby’s brother’s bar, surrounded by members of Portland and the Flash.

“What’s up, Al, you don’t like your beer? Want another one?” Alex had barely touched her beer, just enough out of character to draw Abby’s concern.

“I’m fine.”

“You know,” Abby said, “My brother has a rule that if you’re moping in here, you have to keep drinking.”

“I don’t understand why everyone thinks I’m moping all the time,” Alex said with a laugh.

Abby called the bartender for another beer anyway. “Okay, you’re not moping. I guess it’s just weird to see you sitting back while Tobin, of all people, is up laughing and dancing.”

The answer rolled off her tongue before she had time to soften the edges. “Well, we have other friends on the team, don’t we?” She took a long drink of her new beer to pacify Abby.

“It’s just that you’re usually inseparable. But…wait…” Her eyes narrowed in suspicion.

Shit. Was she really being so obvious that Abby, of all people, could tell? They read each other like books on the field but loud, brash Abby Wambach didn’t exactly have the deftness required to discern subtle social undertones. That was more Hope’s—and lately, Kelley’s— style. She hadn’t expected to be called out on anything tonight and didn’t have an excuse ready.

“Alex, did something happen between you and her?”

For a moment, she considered telling Abby everything, simply because the weight of it had been pulling her down for so long. Everything, from the beginning, when Tobin had first showed up to Portland, through the rough practices, even the humiliating ripples of jealousy.

“It’s just—” she stopped short and bit her lip. It took only a deep breath for her to decide that now was not the time, and to fall silent.

“It’s what?”

Alex shook her head. “Nothing. I kinda snapped at her after the game tonight, I’m forming an apology right now for later on.”

Abby sat back with a slow nod, rubbing her chin, searching for the perfect piece of advice that she so often spouted whenever Alex was having a problem. “Well, it’s Tobin. She understands you better than anyone else, I’m sure she knows what’s going on. Just hug her like always, say you’re sorry, and fall asleep watching an Adam Sandler movie. Isn’t that the usual?”

“Yes, it is,” Alex laughed. _The usual for when she gets fed up with me accusing her of cheating at board games. Not ripping her apart for trying to comfort me after a soccer game._

And truly, tonight had only been the tip of the iceberg when it came to things that needed to be said. She just didn’t know if she could say them.

* * *

_“Tobs, I’m really happy for you,” Alex said, “France is gonna be huge for your game.”_

_Tobin had to lean in to talk beneath the chaos of their Fourth of July cookout; everything had been tame enough until the sun went down and the drinks got stronger and the homemade pyrotechnics had emerged._

_Tobin shrugged, then looked out at the rest of the party. “I’m excited…it’s no  Portland though, and there’s a lot I’m going to miss.”_

_“Like me?” she joked._

_“Of course you.”_

_“You know I’ll miss you too. I just feel betrayed you’re leaving me so soon.”_

_“I would love to stay here.”_

_“Alex!” Nikki jogged forward and interrupted their conversation. “Dude, go grab the rest of the rocket fireworks from my car, and a few more beers!”_

_Tobin cocked an eyebrow. “This seems like a safe combination,” she observed dryly , even though she held a beer of her own, and it wasn’t her first._

_Alex laughed over her shoulder as she made her way out to the cars, using her phone backlight to navigate through the pitch-darkness and search Nikki’s trunk._

_The light timed out and plunged her back into darkness just as she heard footsteps crunching on the gravel driveway, so she didn’t bother to turn it on again. “Nikki, I got them—” she began, to no response. The glowing afterimage of fireworks against the sky lit up her retinas and made vision impossible. Listening instead, she recognized the lazy gait just as it halted and Tobin arrived in front of her._

_“Tobin—”_

_She felt Tobin’s arms shake as they encircled Alex in a tight hug; pressed up against Tobin’s chest, Alex relaxed, releasing a sigh she hadn’t known she was holding. “Tobs. Don’t go to Paris,” she said with a small laugh._

_Instead of responding, Tobin shifted slightly, pulling away by inches, and when Alex turned to meet her face she hissed in a breath just as Tobin leaned in and kissed her, as sharply and startlingly as the boom of the fireworks behind them._

_Minutes slowed and Alex’s heartbeat sped up to match the percussion symphony she could feel in Tobin’s chest. Another boom followed by an excited squeal was what broke them apart at last and before she could react, Tobin was stumbling back, away, leaving her in the dark once more._

* * *

_For the rest of the night, Tobin was deep in animated conversation with Mana, then with Allie, then with Tiffany. Even if Alex had gotten the chance to talk to her, she wouldn’t have known what to say. Her mind whirled with possibilities she couldn’t face._

_The next morning Tobin left early for her two weekend weddings and Alex awoke once she was gone with a strange, giddy feeling in her chest that muted her anxieties from the night before. She didn’t know what exactly it was—because she didn’t know what, exactly, had happened on the driveway—but it was caused by and centered on Tobin. She spent the rest of the weekend relentlessly refreshing Instagram and twitter, waiting for whatever pictures and cryptic tweets Tobin could come up with, and she was rewarded. By the time Tobin returned on Monday, Alex still hadn’t named the feeling in her chest and the lump in her throat, perhaps out of reluctance to face it, but her heart surged traitorously when she heard keys in the door. That was evidence enough._

_Tobin greeted her with a hug, greeted Allie with a hug, and spent the next half hour describing both weddings. Then she asked what was for dinner._

_No mention of what had happened on the Fourth of July. Nothing but that same, cavalier smile. Alex herself was terrified to try to broach the subject, scared to say the wrong thing, scared to put a name to this._

_She waited, but the days passed in nothing but friendship as Tobin extended herself to the rest of the team. That was when Alex started to crumble._

She looked across the bar and her heart flipped a little when she saw Tobin throw her head back and laugh with Nikki. This ache in her chest had been growing for weeks. Tobin had kissed her, with shaking hands and shaking legs and shuddering breath, and until Tobin had kissed her Alex had never minded the fact that their relationship stopped at friendship. Now with this cloud of complacency removed, courtesy the midfielder laughing across the bar, her skin crawled at the idea that they would only ever be just friends. In flashes that plagued her daily, she saw her relationship with Tobin as something it was always meant to be. Something more.

And Tobin didn’t seem to care either way.

First, it had been fear that crippled her. Then confusion as her fears dissolved and she accepted these new feelings. Then hurt. If she had been an excuse-making person, she even could have attributed her play to the undercurrent of emotion roiling around her and Tobin.

_“Let it go,”_ Tobin had said _, “Just breathe, relax. Focus on what’s important.”_

She ground her teeth, but in the end she released a long breath. “Fine,” she muttered aloud. Abby turned to her with eyebrows raised, and Alex continued the rest in her head: _Fine. If she wants to be friends, I can do that. I can stay focused. I need to stay focused. She’s my best friend._

Tobin laughed again and Alex made an addendum:

_Playoffs. That’s what matters now._ The end of her summer loomed ever nearer.

* * *

The newspapers called it a dream playoff run, a fantastic surge upward from the third place spot, spearheaded by “a possessed Alex Morgan,” and they were entirely right.

Kansas City wasn’t prepared for an Alex Morgan who had disengaged entirely from media distractions, from the weight of her responsibilities, and most importantly, from Tobin. She blasted shot after shot. She chased down even the most wayward cross or through ball. When over-matched defenders grew desperate and tried to drag her down, they found ice in her veins and an emotionless mask on her face. She shrugged them off and outran them, time after time, assisting two and scoring the game winner.

In a media interview after the game, Christine Sinclair was left speechless. “I don’t even know…I just…it’s Alex Morgan. That’s all I can say. And I think that’s the perfect way to describe it.”

And her laser-like focus, her sheer determination, continued to leave her teammates in awe: whether it was the post-game celebration, the practices in the run-up to the final, or simply downtime at a hotel, Alex maintained a constant reticence and the controlled fire in her eyes was almost alarming.

Coming into the final game against Western New York, no one had any doubt that the Flash had not only seen Alex’s manic performance, but also that Abby had taken great care to warn her teammates of Alex’s potency when she got into moods like this. And yet, she made an even greater impact in the final than she had against Kansas city: two goals, an assist, and walking calmly away from a foul that gave Portland a penalty and a Flash defender a red card. A four-two rout.

After the final, she was the first person to whom Sinc handed the championship trophy, but far more important to her was when Tobin leapt into her arms.

“We won!” the midfielder shouted in raw triumph. “We did it!”

“We fucking did it,” Alex repeated with a grin, setting Tobin down.

_My best friend,_ she thought to herself. The words were somehow easier to say now that she had a medal around her neck. Or perhaps it was because she had spent the last week repeating them with every inhalation, and now that the pressure of playoffs had been lifted from her shoulders, so had the pressure on their friendship.

“I can’t think of a better way to end this summer, as champions.”

“Well…” She chewed her lip in barely concealed delight. “How about we throw on our US jerseys and go beat Mexico while we’re at it?”

Tobin jumped into her arms again with a wild cat-call of victory. What an end to their summer.

Six days left.


	2. Chapter 2

A long time ago, sometime during Olympic qualifying, Heif had tried to film a Studio 90 video focusing on Tobin and Alex's friendship, but he had found the task so difficult that he abandoned it and never suggested interviewing them together ever again. A day later, he banned them from being present at each other’s interviews as well. Tobin hadn't been able to stop laughing, and her laugh never failed to elicit Alex's laughter, and then neither of them could stop giggling for more than a few seconds. But when the US team got into their two-day camp preceding their September 3rd game against Mexico, Heif couldn't pass up the NWSL champions angle for the newest video. He caught them after their first morning practice and used Rachel to separate Tobin and Alex.

That plan failed so spectacularly that even the camera man had a hard time holding it together.

"Alright, last question," Heif said, resignation in his voice. The planned four-minute interview had stretched to twenty minutes with all the interruptions and would require hours of editing. "Thoughts for the league for next year?"

Rachel and Tobin both looked to Alex, the unofficial spokeswoman for league matters like this, and she shrugged.

"I mean, I think—"

She noticed too late that Heif and the camera-man had stepped back.

" _CONGRATS TO THE CHAMPIONS!_ " 

Tobin screeched and Alex tried to dive forward, but she couldn't avoid the deluge of ice water that suddenly engulfed the three players from behind. Shrieking, though this time in indignant rage rather than the cold shock, they whipped around to find half their team sprinting back across the field, laughing maniacally.

"You guys were taking so long, you missed your ice baths!" Syd bellowed from a safe sixty yards away.

Pinoe leapt into the air in triumph. “We’re just trying to help you out!”

Sydney and Megan’s four recruits—Hope, Abby, Carli, and Lauren—cheered and dutifully followed their ringleaders as they made their way back to the locker room. Heif wrapped up the interview quickly and then the three Portland girls stalked back to the locker room as well, soaking and freezing.

"Alex! Tobs! Rach!" Syd bounded toward them jovially when they appeared in the door with glares. The rest of the team cheered again. “Did you guys miss me? Like, I know life was pretty pointless without me in it, but beyond that?”

Alex grinned. “I don’t get headaches as often.”

“But the heartache more than makes up for it, right? Right, Rach?”

“No, you know, I kinda liked the lack of headaches, and cold,” Rachel said as she pulled a towel around herself; Syd pantomimed a dagger in her heart and stomped away, leaving the three girls to sit on a nearby bench and shiver.

"We are getting them back," Alex muttered murderously.

Tobin nodded, but Rachel leaned away with a vigorous shake of her head. "Uh, no thanks. Don't drag me into your little cabal."

"What? Why not?" Alex demanded.

“...What does cabal mean?” Tobin asked curiously.

"Because,” Rachel told Alex over the top of Tobin’s head. “Syd is taking over Mittsy's old job, and she's doing it enthusiastically. I'm not starting a war with her."

Despite Alex's very best glare, Rachel adamantly refused to have any part in anything, even so much as providing an idea for a plan of attack.

"Well then Tobs, it's just you and me," Alex finally said, looking to her ever-loyal ally.

Tobin rubbed her chin in thought. "You know, I am the only one who knows about your fear of spiders. They would pay me pretty well for that information. And it would be hilarious."

Alex damn near fell off her chair, sputtering indignantly. “You too? You of all people are supposed to be on my side!”

“Of all people?” Tobin asked, eyebrows raised. “What does that mean?”

“You’re my best friend and you’re going to abandon me?”

“It’s just so much fun to prank you.”

“Tobin!”

Tobin laughed. "I'm kidding, Lex. When have I ever not been on your side? Let’s get them back, bad."

* * *

The elevator doors slid open to an empty hallway, but no one stepped out. Alex and Tobin sat crouched against each other in one corner of the elevator. "So Hope is room 212, Syd and Pinoe are 215, Lauren is 225, Carli, 217, Abby..." Alex ticked the numbers off on her fingers but didn't move forward, looking pensive.

"Don't get nervous on me now, Alex," Tobin warned quietly, "This was your stupid idea."

"It is not stupid!" She fired back in a fierce whisper.

"Then why are you backing out?"

"I'm not backing out, I'm plotting! It's strategy."

"They're going to be done with dinner and start looking for us soon!"

Alex huffed and grabbed the giant black garbage bag out of Tobin's hands. "Now look who's nervous," she muttered, striding forward. "Do you have the keys?"

"Yeah, I signed a ball for the front desk guy and he helped me out." She pulled the first out of her pocket and handed it to Alex. "Let's get it done fast."

Just an hour before, while the rest of the team relaxed in post-practice downtime, Alex and Tobin had slipped out of their DC hotel with hoods covering their faces, and spent over $100 dollars at the nearest supermarket.

They returned with two hundred rolls of toilet paper.

Tobin and Alex attacked Hope’s room with nerve-driven efficiency and speed, layering the bed, wrapping the curtains, essentially covering everything in the room with twenty-five rolls of toilet paper and then rushing out as fast as possible, high on adrenaline. 

After the first initial rush of danger, Tobin couldn't keep the grin off her face as they hit Lauren's room, and then Carli's. Alex fed off her emotion and by the time they had reached Megan and Sydney's room, they were breathless with laughter.

Tobin counted them on her fingers. "So that’s twenty-five rolls for Hope, twenty-five for Abby, twenty-five for Carli, and twenty-five for Lauren." 

"And that leaves one hundred rolls for the masterminds," Alex replied as she opened the door. "Shall we, Miss Heath?"

"After you, Miss Morgan."

Laughter rose up in their throats again as they darted into the final room; flush with victory, the two women spent just as much time draping one another in toilet paper and taking pictures as they did vandalizing the room. Once finished, they jokingly waltzed among the piles of excess toilet paper all over the floor, having never felt more on top of the world than in that moment.

* * *

"Where are they?" The threatening tone of Hope's demand had Alex and Tobin shrinking down in their seats the next morning at breakfast, as most of the team ambled into the dining room. 

Lauren, of course, sold them out instantly, waving Hope over to their table. She had found the whole prank quite hilarious and couldn’t wait to see the reactions of her fellow victims.

"You two dumbasses!" Hope exclaimed as she strode forward. Lauren bounced gleefully in her chair. Tobin and Alex pretended to be intimidated, as usual, but the sparkle in Hope's blue eyes meant that she was just inches away from laughter. "Don't ever try to get revenge on me again, got it? I'll let it slide for now but I've been around here a lot longer than you have."

They nodded solemnly.

Abby and Carli had been around for a long time as well and took the joke in stride, but it was Syd and Pinoe who attracted the most attention when they raced into the room, streamers of toilet paper trailing behind them. They were already laughing by the time they reached Alex and Tobin’s table.

"Alright, alright!" Sydney said, to quiet the laughter of the dining room—most of her teammates had heard the story already. "Alex and Tobin really got us. I'll admit it. It took _so_ long to clean all of that up."

"A hundred rolls," Tobin said, with a proud smirk at Alex. Megan had draped them both in the streamers of toilet paper and Tobin tied hers around her forehead like a warrior. Alex wore hers like a beauty pageant sash.

"So it was a good prank," Sydney continued to the group. "Maybe not as good as mine, but still good. So I wanted to congratulate you on not coming up with something totally lame like I expected."

"Aw Syd, we've just missed you so much," Alex said with a roll of her eyes.

"Well duh. I maybe missed everyone a little too. And because you’re my good friends, I’ll be nice and cut you some slack instead of striking back. We’ll wait until October for revenge, deal?"

A collective sigh of relief went up from the team, all of whom expected to be a civilian casualty in a prank war between Sydney, Megan, Alex and Tobin. Crisis averted.

* * *

Alex drummed rhythms on her stomach with the T.V. remote, entertained at the sound it made—and then relieved that no one else was in the room to laugh at her. But at this point, anything was more entertaining than watching the same Sports Center baseball highlights for the third time in an hour. She was filled with a restless energy. An easy pre-game practice that afternoon and tons of interaction with the fans afterward had only intensified the incessant buzzing in her veins, and she still had forty-five minutes before the team's traditional pre-dinner walk (the eve of every game, the team would leave their hotel and wander about, chatting and decompressing, before going in for dinner). She was expected to entertain herself until then.

Of course, practice hadn’t been fruitless, or even remotely bad, like some of the Portland trainings had been. Alex relaxed on her bed with the knowledge that her bout of gritted-teeth dissatisfaction with her game now seemed to be over: at this session, she had been surprised to find that her movements were once more fluid and natural, her shots coming off her cleat feeling like nothing at all. She had laughed at this, and then used it to dominate drills for the first time in what felt like forever. With her teammates, she celebrated goals and bitched loudly about perceived injustices, laughing when the coaches just waved her off. She had nailed Tobin with a hard shot at the end of practice and even now she smiled at how long they had rolled around on the turf about it afterward. 

Though one practice could hardly prove a complete turn-around, it was enough to let her breathe easy. She had won a championship. She had regained her friendship with Tobin. Everything was smooth sailing. 

At last, the vibration of her phone saved her from boredom.

**Tobin: hey, meet me in the equip room before the team walk. Try to be sneaky. I have an awesome plan for Syd. Leave your phone in your room too.**

* * *

Alex hurried down the hall. Whatever this plan was, they had just twenty minutes until the team walk and an hour until dinner, so they had to fine-tune it as soon as possible. Knowing Tobin, it would take her fifteen minutes just to explain it.

"Tobs?" She pushed open the partially ajar door and strode in. "This plan better be worth breaking a truce with Sydney."

Tobin sat on one of the massage benches, swinging her legs, but she stopped abruptly when Alex arrived. "Wha?"

“What’s your grand plan?”

"What plan? And how did you get my phone?"

"I don't have your phone."

“Um…”

The confusion creasing both their faces suddenly made sense; Alex whirled but she couldn't even take a step forward before the door slammed shut, punctuating Syd's laughter.

"You're going to sit in there and think about what you did!" Pinoe called through the door as Alex rushed forward and tried to open it; they must have secured it from the other side, because she couldn't pull the door open even with all of her weight.

"Syd! Pinoe! Damn it!"

"You ever cleaned up 100 rolls of toilet paper? You're lucky we didn't carry your mattresses downstairs in the middle of the night."

Alex smacked the door. "You are children." This insult was slightly undermined by Tobin's giggling from the other side of the room.

"Have fun! We'll save you some dinner. See you in a few hours!"

"Or maybe tomorrow," Pinoe said. "Hey, iron my jersey while you're in there, yeah? Cool." 

Their voices and victory faded down the fall and Alex turned back to the room with barely controlled fury beneath her flashing eyes.

"I cannot believe them!" She hissed. When Tobin's grin didn't fade, she grew incredulous: "Were you in on this too?"

She immediately put her hands up in defense, resolving her smile to one of soft amusement. "No, Lex! I was asleep most of the day. They must have paid Morgan to snag my phone."

"Of course you were asleep," Alex fumed. Tobin burst into laughter again.

"Whatever, we'll get them back, if not this camp, then the next. Morgan too. Indoctrinate the rookie." After a moment, in which Alex sank down to the floor to sit against the wall, Tobin continued curiously, "Do you think they're really not going to let us out for dinner? That would suck."

"Yes! I can't believe I walked into something so obvious. You never use that many words in your texts. I shoulda known." The fact that she was locked in a room didn’t mean much to her: it was the fact that Sydney and Megan had beaten her—she refused to lower herself to "outsmarted" because that was a level of pathetic she couldn't face—that really burned. 

But at least she had Tobs, who was smiling once again. "Well, at least we're locked in here with the snacks,” the midfielder said. “Licorice?"

Tobin joined Alex on the floor and quietly ate her half of the box of licorice as Alex detailed exactly what she was going to do the moment Syd released them. They came up with grand plans of revenge for each piece of candy they ate, each one more ridiculous and extreme than the last, until Alex's anger had faded and they leaned against each other on the wall, all smiles. 

"Damn, Tobs, I'm gonna miss you." Alex smiled at her around a mouthful of Power Bar. "When's your flight again?"

"6 AM the morning after the game. I get into LAX at 2 California time."

Alex, who had been about to make a joke about waking up early, nearly choked on her food—Tobin busied herself with a wrapper while Alex cleared her throat. "LAX? You're going to LA?"

Tobin just shrugged. "Yeah, I got two days before I have to leave, I might as well. Haven't surfed once all summer."

"So you just bought a ticket to the other side of the country for a two day surf trip?"

"Why not?" She responded with a grin. "Wanna come with me?"

"You're _so_ weird. And random."

"So you’re coming?"

Alex didn't even need to voice her answer; they both knew what it was going to be. Instead they sat together in the rapidly darkening room without bothering to turn on a light, and discussed flight plans and the best way to waste two languid days in Los Angeles.

Tobin finally sat back, satisfied. "So it’s a plan, then: Back to California to close out a great summer."

"It has been a damn good summer," Alex agreed, "I mean, plenty of ups and downs, but—"

"I'm sorry I kissed you."

The jolt that shot through her body stole coherent thought. "You're—I—what?" 

"On The Fourth of July, at the barbecue." As if she had forgotten. Tobin rested her chin on her knees and examined her toes as she spoke. "I'm sorry if it ...messed anything up. Or made it awkward. You're my friend, it was stupid. I didn’t mean it."

"Why did you do it?"

Of all the questions she could have asked, the only one that jumped to her lips was accusatory. Before she could take it back, Tobin took a steadying breath.

"Because...I don't know what I was doing. But that night I had this feeling ….I don't know. I was thinking about the fireworks and how quickly they disappeared and how summers were like that. It was already going so fast and you know summer is my favorite and then it’s gone but you don't even realize that it's passing until the end. Like sunsets and surfing and everything, even soccer games. But you weren't, you were still there, and I just—"

She wasn't making sense. When Tobin got nervous, unless someone anchored her to Earth, she babbled on and on and drifted into her own world. Just as Alex reached over and put her hand over the top of Tobin's: she hadn't yet found the words, but the contact could bring her back down to earth. Tobin finally looked at her with clarity.

"And I know it was stupid of me, but I—"

The door swung open; the light clicked on.

"Tobin? Alex? Why are you sitting in the dark?"

Alex and Tobin jumped to their feet; in the doorway, HAO's face was colored with confusion.

"Megan and Sydney!" was all Alex could roar.

"What? I just wanted something to eat—" she began, pointing at the food trunk.

"I knew someone on this team would get hungry eventually," Alex said. She went from zero to a hundred miles an hour in a heartbeat. "Where are Megan and Syd?"

Heather shrugged. "After dinner they went out to the pool, they've been making Vines out there for the past half hour. Some of the other girls are out there too."

Alex grabbed Tobin's hand, fire in her eyes. "Let's go!"

"Just don't kill them, okay?" Heather, bemused, called down the hallway after the two young players.

Alex darted into her room and immediately lunged for her bag, digging through it like a woman possessed.

"What are you gonna do?" Tobin asked, trying to look over her shoulder. "Wait—are those firecrackers?" Alex grinned, clutching them in her palm as she threw on a sweatshirt. "Wait, you just carry those around with you? Isn't that illegal? Isn't that a fire hazard? _Did you take them on the plane_?"

Alex shushed her impatiently and grabbed her hand again, pulling her back into the hallway. "I grabbed then from the flea market today. You always have to be prepared."

"Uh, whatever you say, Rambo."

* * *

Just like with the toilet paper, Tobin's nervous reluctance vanished as they crept closer to Syd, Pinoe, Morgan, Becky, and Crystal: their targets stood leaning against the pool fence, faces illuminated by their phones, not imagining that any sort of attack was currently inching toward them in the bushes. She kept one hand clenched in the back of Alex's sweatshirt and the other clamped over her mouth to keep from laughing as they stole forward and planted the firecrackers just behind Sydney. She lit the match.

So close to the nation's capital, the screams and gunfire-like reports must have created a national security panic; at least a dozen windows up the side of the hotel lit up as Sydney's shriek echoed into the night. When Tobin and Alex burst forward out of their hiding spot and added their laughter and shouts of triumph to the cacophony, faces lit up by the fireworks, the screams of their teammates changed from fear to incredulity. Incredulity turned to obscenities just a moment later.

The peal of Tobin's laughter in her ears covered any abuse their teammates shouted at them. Alex was entirely consumed by Tobin's face, the way she looked in the late evening darkness and the way the firecrackers had monetarily highlighted her cheekbones in silver and red, and how her eyes still sparkled far after it had all burned out.

She didn't know what Tobin had been talking about with the summer and the sunsets, but in that moment, if Tobin had felt the desire to kiss her again, Alex didn't think she would have minded.

* * *

The game against Mexico proved to be more of a fan exhibition than a gritty battle, so spirits remained high and bodies relatively ache-free in the hours after the 90-minute, 3-0 match. Unencumbered by sore muscles and frazzled post-game stress, the two women were even able to catch a few hours of sleep on their 6 AM flight to the west coast.

Noontime found them dozing in the Venice Beach sand, the ocean too glassy for surfing. This was fine; jet-lagged and travel-worn, they barely made it through dinner before they got home and collapsed into their beds at eight PM. The California lifestyle suited them.

* * *

"Yo, dude, wake up."

At first Alex thought she was still dreaming—Tobin never woke up before 8 AM—then she opened her eyes to see her friend standing over her with wet, sandy hair and a fresh smile. She must have been out on the waves since before dawn.

"Leave me alone," Alex groaned in a voice that begged the opposite. 

Tobin couldn't be so easily swayed. "I bought breakfast, since all we have in the house since last winter is canned corn and red wine."

"That seems appropriate somehow," she replied with a laugh. "What'd you get me?"

"Cinnamon rolls and coffee from the place down the street. Now get up, I'm bored."

Though it was their only full day in Los Angeles and the weather decided take their side for that—85 degrees and not a cloud in the sky—the two women spent the first half of the day curled up on couch with their leisurely breakfast, catching up on soccer around the world. Santa Monica came alive in the mid-afternoon with vendors and tourists and street artists. Alex and Tobin wandered the streets for hours, chatting mindlessly, just like old times. They scarfed down a quick dinner at their favorite Italian corner restaurant, then raced home to grab Tobin's board for late-day, sunset surfing.

She finally ambled up the beach and collapsed onto a towel next to Alex just as the sun touched the horizon. The water had nearly dried on her skin before she spoke.

"A day like this makes it hard to leave for eight months."

Alex looked down at her. "France will be great for your game. Even half a season did you good."

"I wish you could come with me," Tobin mumbled into the towel.

"What?"

"Your game isn't too bad either," Tobin said more clearly. "That goal the other day was perfect. Can't get a better shot than that."

"Thanks."

"And I should know just how good your shot is after open practice." Alex had cracked a shot directly into Tobin's ribcage. They had laughed until they couldn't breathe. "But don't worry, I won't even complain about the bruise."

"Good, or else I'll do it again," Alex said with a smirk.

"Is this what I get for trying to compliment you?" 

"Well, you can keep going if you want."

With a shake of her head, Tobin continued, "All I was going to say was that it was nice. Upper ninety. You practiced and played well all camp. Feel good?"

"Great," Alex admitted. "It's been a while." The first light breeze of the impending evening drifted over them, so Tobin, shivering, sat up and leaned against Alex as a windbreaker. Alex's skin prickled at the points of contact. The words kept coming.

"I just feel a lot less stressed now. Everything's working again. It was probably because we won the championship, after a season like that. For me, at least," she added quickly.

"Yeah...what was going on in Portland, Lex? Was everything okay?"

She knew that her frustration had shown through more than once, but Tobin had always been too tactful and loyal to confront her about it. But she was also too concerned to sweep it under the rug forever.

"I know I wasn't the best roommate," she confessed with an apologetic smile. "I couldn't ever relax. There was just so much going on, and to top it all off, I felt like I was losing you and trying to hold on tighter all the time."

"Losing me?" Tobin asked.

Alex's face flushed and she edged slightly away from the contact between them. "Yeah—I mean—those five months sucked without you, you know. And then when you got back, it wasn't like I was just losing you to Paris but to everyone else. I don't know why."

Tobin didn't understand—she drew her knees up to her chest and rested her chin on them, examining the sand in silence—and Alex almost bit back her next words.

"And I was a little jealous of everyone else getting along with you so well. Maybe."

Whereas her skin had prickled at the contact between them earlier, it now burned as her body temperature shot through the roof in nerves and embarrassment the longer the silence stretched. She tried to mutter something about being best friends; it came out jumbled and too quiet and when she trailed off lamely, Tobin didn’t mention it.

“I’m going to miss you too, dude," she finally said. They watched the waves. "You know that. It's going to be weird, not falling asleep across the room from you."

This was the least of Alex's worries—although, she realized bitterly, it was just one more thing to miss. The aching in her chest didn't spring from Tobin's imminent departure, but rather from the fact that she had convinced herself that it was possible to maintain a friendship with someone from whom she wanted so much more. Being pulled from the illusion always hurts. She couldn't hide that. She couldn't block out the pain. She couldn't lie to herself. All she could do was hope that she would learn to live with it, a feat that was impossible with Tobin sleeping in the same room and only extremely difficult with her 6000 miles away. 

"We survived it last time," Tobin continued as she traced her fingers in the sand; she finally hazarded a smile at her friend. “I know eight months is a long time to be away from me—”

Alex groaned and rolled her eyes. “Way to ruin the moment.”

Tobin gave herself ten seconds to laugh at her own joke while Alex glared (to no effect, of course) before she sobered again. “But you’re not going to lose me. I promise. I don’t want to lose you either. We’ll make it work, right?”

“Mhmm.”

“You’re my best friend. We’ll be fine.”

"Don't—" _Go._ The word was on her lips, selfish and heavy, but the way the wind briefly lifted Tobin's hair around her face gave Alex pause. She had never noticed a difference before, but for the first time in weeks, Tobin truly looked at home. Her bronze tan, faded from rainy Paris, had finally returned. Her eyes reflected the glow of the sunset and the white crests of the waves. Even as she sat and absently traced designs in the sand, she seemed to be at ease more than ever before, as if the weight of the world had vanished now that she was back where she belonged. This was her home. And she would return to it, in the end. 

The constancy of it all, compared to the beautiful transience of summer or a sunset or a firework, overwhelmed Alex. Just as Tobin had said a few days before in her rambling apology.

And, realizing this, Alex suddenly understood why Tobin had kissed her at the beginning of their summer. It all made sense, because now, she wanted to do nothing more than lean over and kiss Tobin back.

"Don't...worry," she said instead, and the little ray of hope in her voice sounded authentic even to her. "Nothing's gonna change. I'll still be here when you get back." Constant.

"You don't know how reassuring that is, Lex."

They reached out and held each other in a hug for a long moment, breathing in time with the crashing of the waves on the beach. They were in one of the most beautiful spots in the world, and Alex could only focus on the feeling of Tobin's arm around her shoulders.

"C'mon," she said finally, with a deep breath and a note of tired finality in her voice. The sun had set. They pulled away. "It's your last night here, let’s go crack a bottle of wine."

Tobin brightened. "And canned corn?!" She asked with mock excitement.

"Let's go, dork."

* * *

A toast to a successful Champion's League season for PSG was really all that Alex could manage, and perhaps Tobin sensed that—or perhaps she just had never really been a fan of red wine—so after just one glass, Tobin yawned and put the bottle back in the kitchen. Conversation stayed light: French teammates, opponents, chances, adventures. The unspoken agreement they had forged on the beach was far too fragile for more serious discussion. 

After an hour together on the couch, the yawns came more and more frequently until they were forced to admit defeat and bid each other lingering good nights.

The moment her head hit the pillow she was restless again. She hadn’t had enough wine to dull the sharp ache she had been fighting all afternoon and her thoughts ran rampant through her mind. She got up to wash her face two separate times. On the second trip back, just as she clicked off the light, Alex heard a noise at the end of the hallway and suddenly her entire being seemed to settle.

She heard Tobin’s footsteps before she saw her form in the dark hallway, but she felt them even before she heard them. She had felt this moment coming since they had touched down in Los Angeles, but she had ignored it.

When she saw Alex waiting in the doorway of her room, Tobin stutter-stepped and almost tripped. An unusual occurrence considering her lazy stride, but she could write it off as the darkness of the hallway.

“Hey,” Alex said softly.

“Hi.” Still obviously surprised, her voice was a little too loud for the darkness; she dropped it lower. “Are you…okay?”

“I’m okay,” she murmured. “What are you doing up?”

 “I can’t sleep. You?”

“Me neither… I just keep thinking about ways I can get you to miss your flight tomorrow.”

“Come up with a good plan and I’m down.”

“I wish.”

The light from the windows in the living room, at one end of the hallway, was just enough to outline Tobin as she stepped forward and pulled Alex into her arms. Alex heaved a sigh of resignation, knowing that this would be the last unhurried hug they would share.

 “I don’t want you to leave me,” she mumbled into Tobin’s shoulder, despite herself.

Her muscle memory returned her to the Fourth of July when Tobin pulled away by inches, just enough to realign and capture Alex’s lips when she leaned in again. Except this time, she wasn’t shocked into frozen submission when Tobin kissed her; Alex kissed back, and their bodies suddenly rolled together like waves hitting the shore, quickly, fluidly. Alex’s hands to Tobin’s waist and Tobin’s arms over Alex’s shoulders and behind her neck. The first heartbeat was tentative. Tobin paused and seemed to savor the moment, as she had that night in July.

Alex hadn’t been able to sleep well for a long time. They could stay awake together. They would use these last few hours.

They kissed until the lack of oxygen made their world spin and when they finally broke apart, they held on to one another just to stay upright on the unsteady ground. They had never before felt one another’s bodies like this—through all the goal celebrations, long bus rides spent cuddled together, greetings and goodbye hugs, Alex had never felt Tobin’s body at once so tense and so relaxed in her arms. And yet somehow, it felt familiar. A warmth spread through their veins.

She inhaled sharply and held her breath again as Tobin leaned in to kiss her once more. Her body went numb and she was aware of movement, but she wasn’t quite sure whether she was pushing or Tobin was pulling or another force altogether was moving them backwards into her room. By the time she could take another breath, with Tobin leaving her lips for a moment to move up to her cheek, she discovered that they were horizontal, Alex layered above Tobin’s body.

The room spun. Lips wandered. No thought.

Hands moved in alternating patterns: first Tobin would drift her fingers up into Alex’s hair, and Alex would respond by tracing down Tobin’s bare arm, then Tobin would move down Alex’s shoulders.. Moving into new territory signaled for the other to do the same, kissing all the time.

It was Alex who touched hidden skin first, unconsciously sliding her hand beneath the hem of Tobin’s shirt and feeling hipbones sharp enough to cut glass.

Headlights from a car outside passed the window just as she realized where her fingers were; as she pulled up and away with an apology jumping to her lips, the light flashed across Tobin’s face for a moment. Tobin was looking back at her, eyes shining, face devoid of regret or tentativeness. It was a face to which Alex belonged, and which belonged to her.

And suddenly, inexplicably, Alex understood Tobin’s ardent dedication to her god and her religion. The feeling of having something so new and chance and ephemeral carve a home into your heart with just a few words that sounded like prayer filled her chest with a dazzling lightness. She froze again, but this time she froze kneeling over Tobin and gazing down at her with a previously unknown reverence and devotion, and she recognized the brief flash in Tobin’s eyes as the same one she wore on Sunday mornings. Adoration. She felt it in her own eyes. Then, inspired, her heartbeat tripled; their bodies collided once more and rocked together and Alex’s lips found the soft skin of Tobin’s ear, where she read aloud from the lines and curves of Tobin’s body. Alex _needed_ her now. She had needed her for a long time, and nothing felt more rightthan to finally consummate the fragments of dreams and half-formed fantasies months in the making.

Her desperation showed, she could tell. Her hands shook now more from energy rather than nerves, as she ghosted them up and down Tobin’s rapidly expanding and collapsing ribcage. As much as she needed this, she realized, she needed to show Tobin how she felt even more. Somehow, she needed to communicate the feelings that had her heart hammering in her chest, and her hands and lips could do what words couldn’t, if she could only move _faster._

When she dropped her lips to the bottom of Tobin’s collarbone, pushing down the tanktop, Tobin took hold of her hand and held it still.

“Alex,” she murmured. Alex looked up and Tobin closed the gap between them, far more gently and slowly than they had been moving the past several minutes. “Slow, slower, slower.”

Alex forced her hands to explore more cautiously. Slow, but don’t stop.

Clothes began to peel off—at a glacial pace, for whenever Alex began to lose herself and move too quickly, too hungrily, and Tobin’s muscles would tense beneath her, the younger woman would slip her hands around Tobin’s shoulders to clutch her close to her chest, as if matching their pulses would deepen this current between them and flood Tobin with the same certainty that she herself felt.

Tobin was leaving tomorrow; Alex wanted to drum her feelings into Tobin’s bare skin and leave kisses that Tobin would feel in the dark for the next eight months. She forced herself to focus, a task that was becoming increasingly difficult the more they shifted positions, the more their bare skin touched, the more their lips explored.

Tobin, for her part, needed the languid touches because she was already fighting through the haze that Alex’s presence always created, and anything faster than their current pace wiped her mind blank.

She wanted to remember the way that Alex’s mouth fell open, the way her fingers curled into Tobin’s shoulders, the way a kiss on her hips earned one sound and fingers on her inner thigh earned another. She was fascinated. She would always be fascinated. For a long time, the idea of stopping never occurred to her, despite everything she had ever believe up until now, because the thought of not being able to remember every sensation and every inch of Alex in a moment like this scared her.

“God…Alex,” she breathed. The younger woman grazed her lips back and forth between Tobin’s hipbones. She couldn’t help the way the sound made her fingertips curl into Tobin’s legs, anymore than she could help her heart beat speeding up yet again.

This time, Tobin didn’t stop her.

They began shaky and breathless, but slowly, instinct took over and smoothed out their tentative movements, and the moans that began to rise guided them.

It wasn’t until hours later that Tobin, in an involuntary jerk of her body, knocked Alex's phone from the edge of the bed (her hastily gulped "s-sorry" earned her a soft giggle and kiss) and suddenly time vanished, leaving just them and pillows and sheets. No soccer, no France, no tomorrow. The desperation faded. That the contact between their skin continued unbroken for as long as possible was all that mattered. They curled into each other’s arms, legs and hands tangling together in contentedness.

Sleep clawed at Alex the same way Tobin’s hands had been and she knew by the clouds in Tobin’s eyes that she felt the same overwhelming exhaustion, despite the fact that falling asleep meant waking up and waking up meant saying goodbye. In the end, even keeping their eyes open as they lay motionlessly together grew difficult.

The last thing she remembered was entwining their fingers and squeezing gently. Tobin squeezed back.

* * *

Morning sunlight lit up her eyelids, but she didn’t dare open her eyes. Pretending to be asleep freed her from having to deal with the question that hit her immediately upon realization of where she was and whose arms she was in… _where did this leave them?_

Tobin was leaving. For months. They’d thrown themselves into a situation of enormous gravity. She had, for a half-second, the wild idea that Tobin had no interest beyond sex, a thought she immediately discounted when she remembered the way they had held each other before, but there was a shade of truth to it: They had slept together, and she didn’t know if they could face all the implications that carried.

And then Tobin tightened her grip on Alex’s shoulder and murmured slightly, in that shadow land between awake and asleep, instantly calming Alex’s fears. They had slept together. A giddy sort of warmth fluttered up her ribcage. She had Tobin, here, now, for however long that may hold true. The worry could come later.

“Lex?” Tobin whispered sleepily. Alex’s lips turned up in a smile.

“Mmm. Good morning.”

“It is.”

The warmth in her chest rose higher and from behind her still-closed eyes, Alex pictured Tobin in their kitchen, messy hair lit up by the golden morning sun, making coffee. Perhaps wearing only Alex’s shirt. She imagined herself leaning against the doorway and watching and smiling. When Tobin would finally notice her, she would stroll across the warm kitchen with  cup of coffee and a kiss.

The romantic in her couldn’t resist such a fantasy.

“Coffee sounds so good right now.” She hoped murmuring the words against Tobin’s skin would entice her to get out of bed and make some.

“Mmm, it really does…Nose goes.”

Alex scrunched up her face instead.

“Alex, you make the best lattes.”

“Yeah, but…will you make me one instead?”

“But—”

“Tobinnnnn,” Alex whined in her patent tone. She opened her eyes to see Tobin’s twinkling brown ones looking at her.

“I’m _tired,”_ Tobin whined back. “Plus you make better coffee than I do.” Releasing Alex, she rolled over onto her stomach and stuck her head under the pillow to hide from any more requests, but the move only exposed her smooth back to Alex’s endeavors.

“Please? Please? Please?” She punctuated her begging with a kiss at the base of Tobin’s neck.

Tobin’s only response from beneath the pillow was a muffled groan that heightened into laughter when Alex’s fingers tickled down her ribs.

“Tobinnn, go!”

“You go make it!”

“No, you!”

“You!”

_“Please?”_

At long last, and Alex suspected it was only because she had grown too hot under the pillow, Tobin emerged and flashed Alex a soft-eyed, sleepy grin. “We’re never gonna get out of bed like this. On the count of three, we’ll both go. Deal?”

“Deal,” Alex sighed.

It took, as a matter of fact, several attempts and much more counting for the two women to finally tumble out of bed.

Prior relationships, chaste and stable and responsible, had never prepared them for an awkward morning after like this. Without the protection of darkness, Alex felt her face burn as she stood bare in front of Tobin—a pink tinge reflected in the midfielder’s cheeks as well—and they bent down quickly to collect whatever clothes they could find, shyly avoiding eye contact as if the acknowledgment of each other’s skin would remind them of the night before. It seemed half a dream now. The first tendrils of worry returned to Alex as she got dressed.

A moment later, Tobin burst into laughter and broke Alex from her thoughts. “New fashion trend, huh?” she asked. She gestured at Alex’s shorts—which, in her haste to get dressed, she’d put on inside out and backwards.

She felt herself turn red but tried to pout and narrow her eyes at Tobin, which of course only made Tobin collapse back onto the bed, laughing harder. Outraged, Alex whipped around and made to stomp down the hallway.

“Hey!” Tobin leapt up, grabbing Alex’s hand and took a deep breath to settle herself. “I’m just teasing you, I’m sorry,” she said, “I like them.”

And then she leaned in with a nervous kiss, pulling away almost before Alex realized it and looking down at her feet. For all her fascination and adoration last night, Tobin Heath was still shaky, still tentative in the daylight; it instantly, inexplicably assuaged all of Alex’s fears.

This was real. Nameless, but perhaps a name wasn’t necessary.

Tobin took Alex’s reticence as disapproval and tried again, with another kiss—longer this time, and more assured. “Come on,” she said when they broke apart, “I’ll make your coffee.”

* * *

They finished their first lattes as they tried to pack: Alex bemoaned the fact that Tobin had somehow managed to unpack all of her bags in the two days they had been in Los Angeles, while Tobin just sat amongst the piles, listless and bemused. Eventually Alex removed her from folding duty sent her to wander about the house to collect anything she may have left. As she dutifully climbed to her feet, Tobin noticed a flash of color tucked out of sight, behind Alex and under the bed.

“Wait…why are these here?” she asked. Alex turned to see Tobin pull out a stack of neatly folded t-shirts. Tobin’s t-shirts.

“Uh, I just—” But she couldn’t conjure up a lie quick enough.

“You’re stealing my clothes?” A smirk broke across her face. “Listen, if you wanted style lessons, you could have just asked.”

Alex cocked a threatening eyebrow. “Excuse me?”

“Well I mean, as cool as your backward shorts are, you could learn something from someone like me…”

Perhaps unfairly, she changed her smirk to a glowing, apologetic smile that sucked Alex’s breath from her chest and with it, her snarky reply.

“They smell like you,” she admitted in a small voice, looking at the ground.

After a moment, Tobin tucked the shirts back under the bed.

A little while later, when Alex came back to the bedroom with two fresh cups of coffee, she stopped for a moment at the door before Tobin knew she was there; the midfielder stood with her back to Alex, piling clothes into a suitcase for the first time. It was a sight worthy of a facetious cheer.

But what gave her pause was not the sight of Tobin packing; it was the glimpse of her own possessions in Tobin’s hands: two worn Cal hoodies, a Nike t-shirt, and finally a small bottle that Alex recognized as her favorite perfume. All held for a moment before being placed gently in the suitcase and covered with a few towels.

With the same reserve Tobin had shown in putting the shirts back under the bed, Alex strolled into the room as if she had never seen a thing. She had to bite her lower lip to keep the smile off her face and the tears out of her eyes. It was a strange feeling.

* * *

Their final lattes of the morning, their legs overlapping each other on the couch, sunlight warming them through the window…like waking up in Tobin’s arms, it was an experience she didn’t think she would ever get enough of. Her only regret was that it had taken her the entire summer to get to this point.

“So, just a few hours in America left,” she said finally. Tobin smiled softly over her cup and glanced over at her suitcases piled beside the door.

“I don’t want to do anything else until I have to go. This is perfect.”

A moment passed before Alex spoke again. “It’s going to be a lot harder this time, being here without you. Knowing what I’m missing.”

With a thoughtful nod, Tobin let her gaze drift to the window. She chewed her lip. “We’ll make it work. I’ll be back whenever I can. Because…because it’ll be hard not to see you. Skype doesn’t do you justice.”

Alex barely caught Tobin’s shy compliment. _We. We’ll make it work._ If the hallway kiss earlier hadn’t done it, Tobin’s smile and her quiet confidence in _them_ reassured Alex past any point of doubt. The ache in her chest had palliated. This would work. Eight months or eight days, either way the distance was going to kill but Tobin would come home to her in the end.

“France is good for you,” she said, and for the first time she meant it, “You’ll do great.”

“You’d really like it. You’d love it.” Tobin sounded suddenly inspired. “I know you have league things to finish here for a little while…” (Portland needed her for end-of-season promotions, or something) “…and my sisters are coming to visit at the end of the month, but after, if you want to…like…”

 “Do you want me to come visit?” she asked, delight blossoming up in her chest. She nearly dropped her coffee and quickly set it on an end table.

“I-If you want to,” Tobin stuttered, “I could show you all the best places…”

Alex sat up and leaned forward into Tobin, her hands on Tobin’s thighs and her eyes sparkling. “How does Paris look in…November?”

“Rainy, I heard. But it’s pretty in the rain, my favorite. It's perfect. I'll take you everywhere."

Her heart jumped into her throat and a giddy laugh escaped her lips, as if she were a teenager with a crush, but then she stopped, new inspiration in her eyes. “And during Christmas?”

“Even better.”


End file.
